'This is the object on which the attention of every wise man should be turned. He that by precept or example shall prevail on community to relinquish one superfluous dish, one useless and contemptible trapping, will be the general friend of man. He who labours for riches, to countenance by his practice their abuse, is labouring to secure misery to himself, and perpetuate it in society. Who ought to be esteemed the most rich? He whose faculties are the most enlarged. How wealthy were you, had you but known it, at the moment your mind was distracting itself by these dirges of distress. 'He that would riot in luxury, let him wait the hour of appetite; and carry his morsel into the harvest field. There let him seat himself on a bank, eat, and cast his eyes around. Then, while he shall appease the cravings of hunger (not pamper the detestable caprice of gluttony) let him remember how many thousands shall in like manner be fed, by the plenty he every where beholds. How poor and pitiable a creature would he be, were his pleasure destroyed, or narrowed, because the earth on which it was produced was not what he had absurdly been taught to call his own! 'You complain that the titled and the dignified rejected your intercourse. How could you thus mistake your true rank? How exalted was it, compared to the ridiculous arrogance you envied! Were you now visiting Bedlam, would you think yourself miserable because its mad inhabitants despised you, for not being as mighty a monarch as each of themselves? But little depth of penetration is necessary, to perceive that the lunatics around us are no less worthy of our laughter and our pity. 'If I do not mistake, you, Mr. Trevor, are hurrying into the very errors that have misled your noble minded friend and instructor. Your active genius is busying itself how to obtain those riches and distinctions on which you have falsely supposed happiness depends. You are in search of a profession, by which your fortune is to be made. Beware! Notwithstanding that I am frequently assaulted by the same kind of folly myself, I yet never recollect it without astonishment!' While Turl confined the application of his precepts to Wilmot, I listened and assented with scarcely a doubt: but, the moment he directed them against me, I turned upon him with all the force to which by my passions and fears I was rouzed. 'What,' said I, 'would you persuade me to renounce those pursuits by which alone I can gain distinction and respect in society? Would you have me remain in poverty, and thus relinquish the dearest portion of existence?' Olivia was full in my thoughts, as I spoke. 'Of what worth would life be, were I so doomed? Rather than accept it on such terms, were there ten thousand Serpentine rivers I would drown in them all!' Turl glanced significantly first at me and then at Wilmot. 'Do you consider the danger, the possible consequences, of the doctrine you are now inculcating, Mr. Trevor?'